Biographies
OFFA-Warwick Symposium
23rd-24th March 2016
Alex Wardrop
awardrop@bournemouth.ac.uk
Alex is the Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Fair Access to Higher Education at
Bournemouth University. Her research interests are broad and include the areas of
pedagogical theory, the history of thought and feminist philosophy. She has worked at the
University of Bristol, UWE and at the Office for Fair Access supporting their research and
good practice activity. She has organised outreach activities exploring ideas of motherhood
and making, run workshops for academics on the use arts-based practice for research
development and public engagement and is working with colleagues to develop creative
ways to measure the impact of widening participation interventions. Alex is committed to
making education accessible to marginalised and vulnerable adults and young people
through learning and research strategies rooted in care and creativity.
Andy Wiggins
andy.wiggins@durham.ac.uk
Associate Director of Research and Evaluation at the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring
(CEM) at Durham University. There are two main parts to CEM, firstly we provide
educational assessment systems for the UK and in other countries round the world, and
secondly research and evaluation for a wide range of funders and organisations. CEM was
set up over 30 years ago, and about 100 people are based at the centre. My main research
interests are randomised trials and other related methodologies in both Teaching and
Widening Participation. I am responsible for the Sutton Trust common evaluation framework
which is used both to help develop and manage a range of the Trusts WP programmes, as
well as to assess their impact. I am also a member of the Education Endowment Foundation
evaluation advisory board, as well as the Sutton Trust's research advisory group.
Anna Vignoles
av404@cam.ac.uk
Anna Vignoles is Professor of Education and Director of Research at the Faculty of
Education, University of Cambridge and a trustee of the Nuffield Foundation. Anna has
extensive experience of using large scale administrative data to study factors relating to
pupil achievement and students’ outcomes from education. She has published widely on
widening participation into higher education and on the socio-economic gap in pupil
achievement. Her research interests include issues pertaining to equity in education, school
choice, school efficiency and finance, higher education and the economic value of schooling.
Anna has advised numerous government departments, including the Department for
Education, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and HM Treasury. She
provided advice to the Browne Review of Higher Education Funding, the House of Commons
Education and Skills Committee investigation of higher education funding, the House of
Lords Economic Affairs Select Committee, as part of their inquiry into education and training
opportunities for young people, and Lord Leitch’s Review of Skills. Anna is also a member of
the ESRC Research Committee.
Annette Hayton
A.R.Hayton@bath.ac.uk
Annette Hayton is Head of the Widening Participation Office at the University of Bath joining
Bath in 2012 from Goldsmiths, University of London where she had a similar role She has
many years of experience in managing activities designed to support successful progression
to higher education as well as developing strategies to ensure that all students have a
positive experience of university study. She played a key role in establishing the Aspire
Aimhigher partnership and Lifelong Learning Network in South East London. Before joining
Goldsmiths she established and managed the London Region Post-Network at the Institute
of Education, University of London. She is currently convenor of the UALL (Universities
Association for Lifelong Learning) Widening Participation and Access Network, a member of
ICHEM (International Centre for Higher Education Management) at the University of Bath,
Chair of the Western Vocational Progression Consortium and the UNet Universities Network
and a member of the editorial board of for ‘Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning’.
Annette is interested in how educational theory can be developed and applied in practice to
promote positive change within the education system, aiming to combine theory and practice
in her work.
Becka Wallbridge
becka.wallbridge@offa.org.uk
Becka is a Policy Adviser working in the Evidence and Good Practice Team at the Office for
Fair Access. Before joining OFFA in 2015 she was a social scientist, holding research
positions at Universities of Bristol and Southampton.
Christiana Ogunbote
Y.Ogunbote@warwick.ac.uk
My name is Christiana Ogunbote and I am currently a second year Biomedical Science
student studying at the University of Warwick. As a secondary school student the opportunity
to join Unitracks was extended to me and was a great benefit to me. Unitracks, part of the
Widening Participation team, was an amazing opportunity for me as a student growing up in
East London as the programme provided me with the confidence that I needed to believe
that I was academically capable and also fuelled my interest in attending university. It is
through my own personal experience with Widening Participation that I was extremely
interested in joining the team as a Widening Participation Student Ambassador along with
my roles as a Student Progression Team Ambassador, Sutton Scholars Ambassador and as
an Academic mentor to first years in Warwick’s Life Sciences Department. My love of
education and my interest in helping others in their own educational journey truly began as a
secondary school student who was blessed with the opportunity to understand my own
potential through Widening Participation initiatives.
Christina Hughes
C.L.Hughes@warwick.ac.uk
Christina is a Professor of Sociology and currently serves as Pro-Vice Chancellor (Teaching
and Learning) at the University of Warwick. In this role, she provides academic leadership
for: Student Experience, Quality Assurance and Enhancement in Teaching and Learning,
Widening Participation, Outreach and Careers and Employability.
Christina’s research focusses on equity and gender issues, and has covered areas such as
stepfamily life, educational experiences, and progression in employment lives. Her most
recent work has been with jewellery designer makers and she has become very interested in
the resurgence of craft industry and the cultural economy. Christina also has longstanding
interests in research methodologies. Her publications include: Key Concepts in Feminist
Theory and Research (2002, Sage); Women’s Contemporary Lives: Within and Beyond the
Mirror, (2002, Routledge) Disseminating Qualitative Research (2003, Open University
Press); Feminism Counts: Quantitative Methods and Researching Gender (2011, with
Rachel Cohen Routledge); Researching Gender (2013, Sage); Feminist Research Methods,
International Journal of Social Research Methodology Virtual Special Issue
http://explore.tandfonline.com/page/bes/tsrm-vsi-feminist-methods (2015); (2016)
Posthuman Research Practices in Education, (2016, Palgrave MacMillan). She is co-editor
(with Ros Edwards and Malcolm Williams) of the International Journal of Social Research
Methodology and serves on the Boards of Gender and Education and Gender, Work and
Organisation. Christina is also a Trustee, RSA Academies.
Claire Crawford
c.l.crawford@warwick.ac.uk
Dr Claire Crawford is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick and
Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Her research focuses on the
determinants of educational attainment and higher education participation, and the financial
and distributional consequences of HE funding for graduates, universities and the taxpayer.
She is particularly interested in how education policy affects – and can be used to improve
the outcomes of – young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and has been involved in
the evaluations of a number of programmes aiming to increase educational attainment and
higher education participation amongst these groups. She has also undertaken, with
colleagues, a programme of work documenting and explaining the socio-economic, ethnic
and gender gaps in higher education participation which has garnered significant interest
from policymakers and practitioners. Some of the results from this research include: a) the
vital importance of attainment during secondary school for explaining why young people from
lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to go to university than their richer
counterparts; b) that all ethnic minority groups are now, on average, more likely to go to
university than their White British peers; c) that, comparing pupils with the same
characteristics and school attainment who go to university to study on the same course,
those from lower-performing schools are more likely to go on to get better degree outcomes
than their equivalently-qualified peers from higher-performing schools.
Clive Hunt
CHunt@bournemouth.ac.uk
Dr Clive Hunt is the Associate Dean (Student Experience) in Faculty of Science and
Technology at Bournemouth University. As a Chartered Engineer much of his academic
career has been grounded by his industrial and commercial experience in the aerospace
industry as well as from other industrial sectors in delivering projects and programmes and
integrating engineering expertise. Whilst having an engineering background he has a strong
research focus on higher education and he is particularly interested in understanding how
student groups engage with learning and how organizational strategy is implemented in
historically dependent settings. Clive is currently co-leading an institutional-wide
collaborative fair access research project that is considering the undergraduate student
experience. This project includes academics from a variety of disciplines but also is working
with students, the student union, student support services and widening participation
practitioners. Drawing on the expertise of a research team ranging from Nursing to
Engineering, this Fair Access Research project seeks to understand more fully, the complex
intersections that are at play when it comes to participation in higher education, and to
develop ways to enhance positive student experiences.
Felicity Dunworth
felicity.dunworth@kmpf.org
Felicity is employed as the KMPF Director by the Partnerships Development Office at the
University of Kent. She leads a small support team, working to initiate and to support
collaborative outreach work undertaken by the universities, FE colleges, schools and local
authorities in Kent and Medway. She has spent much of her working life in collaborative
outreach work. She was Director of the Aimhigher Kent and Medway Partnership (AHKM)
between 2004 and 2011 (where the forerunner of the HEAT database was developed with
colleagues from across the South East). She has taught in FE settings, has been an
Associate Lecturer for the Open University and developed and delivered courses on early
outreach programmes for the University of Kent, where she taught (and still does, a little) for
many years.
Felicity is co-author of the Review of Evidence from Aimhigher Area Partnerships (with
Joanne Moore), 2011 and Making Good Use of Evidence (with Sharon Smith), AHSE,
2007.More recently, her interest in the specific challenges to widening participation in rural
and coastal contexts has involved her in a range of national workshops and discussions.
She is a founding member of the National Network for the Education of Care Leavers
(NNECL) and serves as co-Chair on the NNECL Strategic Group and the NNECL South
East Regional Group, having served on the Buttle UK QM Advisory Group and worked as a
volunteer with children in care of all ages.
Graeme Atherton
graeme.atherton@londonhigher.ac.uk
Dr. Graeme Atherton read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Trinity College,
University of Oxford and has a doctorate from the University of Liverpool. has been working
in widening access to higher education (HE) since 1995. He was Associate Dean, Widening
Participation and Community Partnerships at Liverpool Hope University before moving to
London in 2005 to lead the Aimhigher Central London Partnership and then the Aimhigher
West, Central and North London (WECAN) Partnership. In 2011 he founded and now leads
both AccessHE and the National Education Opportunities Network (NEON). AccessHE is a
network of over 300 schools, colleges and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), working in
London to widen access to (HE). NEON is the national professional organisation for
widening access to HE in England with over 80 university members. He holds Visiting
Professorships at London Metropolitan University, Amity Business School and Sunway
University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is a member of the European Access Network
(EAN) Board and formerly chair of the Global Access to Post-Secondary Education (GAPS)
Initiative. He has produced over 120 conference papers and publications in this field
including in 2016 the book ‘The Success Paradox: Why we need a holistic theory of social
mobility’ (Polity Press).
Ian Abbott
i.d.abbott@warwick.ac.uk
Ian Abbott is Director of the Centre for Education Studies at the University of Warwick. Prior
to higher education he worked in schools and colleges in senior leadership roles for a
number of years. He has worked in partnership with a number of external organisations
including Teach First and Teaching Leaders developing teaching and leadership in
challenging schools. He has worked on a number of projects overseas including in
Tanzania, South Africa and Ethiopia. He has collaborated with a number of schools and
colleges on research projects. His research interests include education policy, school
collaboration and the Pupil Premium. He is currently carrying out evaluation work on the
effective use of Pupil Premium in primary schools and projects relating to widening
participation in Higher Education. He has published widely on education policy, Pupil
Premium and school collaboration.
Jacqueline Stevenson
Jacqueline.Stevenson@shu.ac.uk
Professor Jacqueline Stevenson is Professor of Education Research and Head of Research
in the Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University. She is a sociologist of
education with a particular interest in policy and practice relating to equity and diversity in
higher education, widening participation, access and student success, pedagogic diversity
and the stratification and marketisation of higher education. Key areas of interest are the
social and academic experiences of religious students, the access, retention and success of
refugees in higher education, and Black and Minority ethnic students' degree attainment and
success. She co-convenes the Society for Research into Higher Education's Access and
Widening Participation Network and is a member of the Executive Committee of the National
Education Opportunities Networks. She is currently working with London Metropolitan
University to evaluate HEFCE's National Networks for Collaborative Outreach and, in
partnership with five other HEIs, investigating the impact of financial support on student
retention and success for the Office for Fair Access. Her forthcoming edited book (with
Annette Hayton and Penny Jane Burke) draws together reflexive approaches to research
and evaluation; a second forthcoming book brings together national and international
research exploring religion and belief in higher education. Jacqueline was previously
Professor of Higher Education at Leeds Beckett University.
Jake Anders
j.anders@niesr.ac.uk
Jake Anders is currently a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social
Research, but will shortly take up the post of Senior Research Associate in the Department
of Learning and Leadership at UCL Institute of Education, University College London. Jake's
research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of educational inequality
and the evaluation of policies and programmes aimed at reducing it. While at NIESR, he has
worked on several research projects, including work for the Department for Business,
Innovation and Skills into the transition from education into the labour market, as well as
leading the randomised evaluation of an Education Endowment Foundation project focused
on improving teachers’ use of formative assessment. Jake completed his PhD in the
Economics of Education at UCL Institute of Education, before which he studied Philosophy,
Politics and Economics at New College, University of Oxford. His doctoral research
consisted of three linked studies considering aspects of socio-economic inequality in access
to higher education, considering both the point of entry to university, but also its precursors.
This is something Jake’s post-doctoral work has also developed, including work with a third
sector organisation focused on tutoring and mentoring students to prepare them for
university on their evaluation capacity and a project funded by the Nuffield Foundation on the
importance of subject choice at age 14. Jake has published in European Sociological
Review, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, and Fiscal Studies, among others. He has a
strong knowledge of the broader education policy environment and previously worked as a
Committee Specialist to the House of Commons Education Select Committee.
John Butcher
john.butcher@open.ac.uk
John is currently Deputy Director, Access & Curriculum, in the Centre for Inclusion and
Collaborative Partnerships at the Open University. His substantive responsibility is for the
production and presentation of the OU’s Access offer, (three cross-disciplinary 30 credit
modules offered as additional preparation in studentship skills and learner confidence to
4,000 distance learners per year. He has authored on a suite of free badged open courses
(BOCs) including Taking your First Steps into Higher Education, which offer skills
development through the OpenLearn platform. He leads the Access Observatory
(responsible for the OU’s research and scholarship in areas around Widening Participation
and inclusion in lifelong learning). Last year he was Principal Investigator on a Higher
Education Academy-funded research project, published as ‘Shoe-horned and side lined’?
Challenges for part-time learners in the new HE landscape. He has previously worked at the
universities of Derby, Northampton and Falmouth, beginning his HE career in teacher
development at the OU. Publications include Developing Effective 16-19 Teaching
Skills and Leading Professional Development in Education.
Jon Beard
Jon.Beard@admin.cam.ac.uk
Jon Beard has worked in admissions, recruitment and widening participation for over 20
years, firstly at the University of East Anglia where he was Head of Admissions and
Outreach, and since 2008 at the University of Cambridge as the Head of the Cambridge
Admissions Office. Currently he leads a team of 30 people and delivers a £10m programme
of access measures which includes one of the UKs largest residential summer school
programmes, and several large scale innovative projects engaging with under-represented
and disadvantaged students.
His engagement with the widening participation agenda has origins that are both personal
and professional. Having himself attended a comprehensive school and FE college, he
gained valuable insight into the range of rural, coastal and urban deprivation as an outreach
officer, and once able to input and later direct policy he resolved to explore and respond to
the issues that limit the life chances of bright but unsupported students. He now addresses
the particular challenge of widening participation at a highly selective institution. Above all he
is a firm advocator of evidence-led approaches to effecting change.
Julian Crockford
julian.crockford@sheffield.ac.uk
Julian Crockford is Widening Participation Research and Evaluation Unit Manager at the
University of Sheffield
Julian joined the University of Sheffield in 1991 as an undergraduate studying English
Literature. This led to a Masters in Contemporary Writing and finally a PhD in Contemporary
American Fiction focused on the 1980s’ Wall Street Novel. Having exhausted all of the
obvious options for continued study, Julian took an administrative job in the University’s
Admissions Service, progressing to Admissions Manager for undergraduate and
postgraduate taught students and serving briefly as acting Head of Admissions. During this
period (as always), HE Admissions went through a fairly tumultuous time, undergoing a
variety of significant policy and practice changes including a number qualification reforms
and the introduction of variable fees (twice!), the creation of the Office for Fair Access and
significant reforms to student number controls.
In May 2012, the University launched its Widening Participation Research and Evaluation
Unit, with a remit to research and evaluate the whole WP student journey, extending from
outreach into student success and progression. As Manager of the Unit, Julian has
introduced a collaborative institutional evaluation framework for WP outreach, supports a
range of short term and longitudinal research and evaluation projects focusing on the whole
student journey, continues to develop evaluation methodology and contributes to sector-wide
discussion in this area through networks such as the National Educational Opportunities
Network (NEON).
Lee Elliot Major
lee.elliotmajor@suttontrust.com
Lee is Chief Executive of the Sutton Trust. He also oversaw the trust’s research work from
2006-2012 as Director of Research and Policy.
Lee is a trustee of the Education Endowment Foundation, and chairs its evaluation advisory
board. He has served on a number of Government advisory bodies on social mobility and
education and he is an adviser to the Office for Fair Access. He commissioned and is a coauthor of the Sutton Trust-EEF toolkit for schools. He was previously an education journalist,
working for the Guardian and Times Higher Education Supplement.
Lee has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Sheffield University and a Master’s degree from
Imperial College London. Lee is the first person in his family to attend university.
Liz Thomas
Thomase@edgehill.ac.uk
Liz Thomas is an independent researcher and consultant for higher education and Professor
of Higher Education at Edge Hill University. Liz has nearly twenty years’ experience of
undertaking and managing research about widening participation, student retention and
success and institutional approaches to improving the student experience. She is committed
to using research to inform national and institutional policy and practice, and her REF impact
case study was awarded 4*.
Liz is currently working with the Higher Education Academy, Action on Access and the Paul
Hamlyn Foundation to deliver and evaluate the What works? Student retention and success
change programme. This three-year programme is collaborating with higher education
institutions from across the UK to implement change at both the strategic and the academic
programme level. It is underpinned by a mixed methods evaluation strategy, drawing on
tenets of action research.
Other current activities include working with the Equality Challenge Unit and 23 colleges and
universities in Scotland to review and improve the participation of students from equality
groups in higher education. This again uses a mixed methodology within an action research
paradigm, including institutional data analysis, qualitative research with (potential) students,
implementation of equality interventions and evaluation research.
In 2014-15 Liz worked with CFE Research to explore and develop an evaluation framework
for widening participation on behalf of HEFCE, as well as completing the three-year
formative evaluation of the National Scholarship Programme for HEFCE with CFE Research.
In 2013 Liz contributed to several studies for HEFCE and the Office for Fair Access to inform
the National Strategy for Widening Access and Student Success.
Michael Kerrigan
michael.kerrigan@ntu.ac.uk
Michael has over ten years’ experience working in the field of widening participation and
student success. His primary research interests are focused on identifying and tackling
educational disadvantage across the student life-cycle; from primary school through to
university graduate destinations. At NTU, Michael is responsible for the targeting and
evaluation of the institution’s access, student success and progression interventions. This
includes tracking outreach participants’ attainment and subsequent progression to HE, and
exploring differential rates of NTU student success by equality & diversity and socioeconomic groups.
Mike Thompson
m.a.thompson@bham.ac.uk
Mike Thompson is the Coordinator of Aimhigher West Midlands.
Mike has worked in education and training for over 20 years, and has been involved in
widening participation (WP) throughout. As Head of Student Services at Hereward College
he managed guidance and support services at the national centre for students with
disabilities, leading a successful bid to the joint HEFCE / FEFC “WP Special Funding
Programme” and coordinating early piloting of the Educational Maintenance Allowance
(EMA) and the Connexions Pathfinder.
As Head of Learning, Skills and Employment at Birmingham Rathbone, Mike was
responsible for funding, curriculum and the delivery of a range of vocational programmes
across the city.
Between 2003 and 2011 Mike coordinated the Aimhigher partnership in Birmingham and
Solihull. This strong partnership survived the loss of national Aimhigher funding in 2011,
and, with the renewed impetus of HEFCE’s National Networks for Collaborative Outreach
initiative, now comprises 12 regional universities and all state-funded schools and colleges in
the West Midlands.
Mike is a governor at a Birmingham secondary school, a member of Birmingham City
Council’s Education and Schools Board and Chair of the West Midlands Quality Awards in
CEIAG Accreditation Board. He has a keen interest in the evaluation of programmes to
widen participation, and has contributed evidence to a number of national reviews, chaired
the West Midlands Aimhigher Data Group and was a member of the National Aimhigher
Data Network.
Neil Harrison
Neil.Harrison@uwe.ac.uk
I currently work as a senior lecturer in education at the University of the West of England
(UWE). My involvement in widening participation began as an undergraduate in the early
1990s when I helped to establish a study centre for non-traditional students. Through the
late 1990s, I managed a portfolio of student-led outreach activities, including taster days for
inner city children and a tutoring/mentoring programme for local schools. In 2000, I moved
to UWE as a student services manager, where I specialised in student finance and began
publishing research around retention and success. In 2007, I switched to an academic
career focused initially around researching widening participation, including one of HEFCE’s
‘four city’ studies and a series of analytical reports for Aimhigher Southwest and Aimhigher
West. To date, I have published 20 peer reviewed articles in the area and my edited book
(with Anna Mountford-Zimdars) on theoretical approaches to widening participation will be
published by Routledge in the autumn. I take an interdisciplinary and mixed methods
approach to research, drawing both on my training as a social statistician and my later
experience as a qualitative researcher, while blending perspectives from sociology,
psychology and economics. I am currently writing up the findings of the AIMS project (which
explored concepts of ‘impact’ and ‘success’ in widening participation) and working on an
OFFA-funded project to help universities to evaluate the success of their bursary schemes.
Through these projects, I have developed an interest in the epistemological limits of
experiment-led evaluation in complex social fields.
Paul Blagburn
P.Blagburn@warwick.ac.uk
Paul Blagburn is Head of Widening Participation and Outreach at the University of Warwick.
Paul joined the University of Warwick in April 2013 and has responsibility for the leadership
of the Widening Participation and Outreach team and the development and implementation
of institutional WP Strategy and access agreement work. His role encompasses strategic
partnership development, providing steer and support for Warwick's innovative and highly
commended academic departmental outreach provision and ensuring interventions make a
difference to targeted beneficiaries (demonstrating impact). Evaluation is central to this work
in building an institutional evidence base whilst contributing to the national policy space. His
career hitherto has been focused towards the area of widening participation, student
engagement and support in a range of different institutions, including in schools and local
authorities.
Philip Dent
p.dent@theprogressiontrust.org
Philip is an independent consultant and specialist in the practice and theory of lifelong
progression.
The development and deployment of his ‘Whole Person, Whole Journey’ model of
progression for all has been the focus of his practice, research, policy, training and
publication work for over a decade.
He has led learning, organisations and projects in education as a secondary school teacher
and leader; as Director of a multi-phase, multi-agency education partnership; and as Chief
Executive of The Progression Trust. His innovative work focuses on developing strategy,
organisations, people and practice in partnership with others.
Philip was national strategy Adviser to the Office for Fair Access; is co-author of the HEFCE
Widening Participation Toolkits for Practitioners; has led research, evaluation and
development projects at universities across the UK and in Australia; and has fellowships or
associate roles at The University of Winchester, The University of Warwick, The University of
Derby and the Higher Education Academy.
Philip is for People. Progression. Partnership.
Rachael Tooth
rachael.tooth@offa.org.uk
Rachael has built a career in higher education spanning fifteen years and has worked at
OFFA since 2013. In her role Rachael collaborates with the sector to identify what research
is needed to best enhance policy and guidance on good practice. She works with OFFA’s
staff in the in-house delivery and commissioning of research to support policy development,
and the broader understanding of widening participation and fair access. Rachael led OFFAs
partnership with HEFCE to develop the national strategy for access and student success,
and also developed the OFFA Strategic Plan 2015-20. Rachael also worked on secondment
for the University of Warwick in the Strategy and Change team over a five month period.
Prior to working at OFFA Rachael worked for HEFCE, initially based in the West Midlands
regional team, working directly with institutions before moving into more policy focused roles.
During her time at HEFCE Rachael managed the national scholarship programme, the
development of the Key Information Set and the introduction of the National Student Survey.
Prior to this Rachael was a legal advisor for the Equal Opportunities Commission and a
sabbatical Womens’ Officer for NUS Wales.
Renata Eyres
r.eyres@surrey.ac.uk
Renata Eyres is Head of Widening Participation and Outreach at the University of Surrey.
Her responsibilities include ensuring the Widening Participation and Outreach Strategy and
the Access Agreement of the university is delivered and closely linked to the other major
strategies of the university. The department works in close collaboration with a wide range of
external stakeholders from across the region and nationally and internally with Faculties and
other areas of the University.
Before coming to the University of Surrey, Renata was Managing Director of Aessenta
Consulting and prior to this spent over 17 years at the University of Salford, latterly as
Professorial Fellow and Head of Partnerships and Business Engagement. She was Project
Director of the HEFCE funded Employer Engagement project ‘Driving Transformational
Change for Employer Engagement’ which was a pan institutional project to ensure that the
academic offering and underpinning infrastructure was fit for purpose, involving the design,
development and implementation of a number of new and revised business support services
and activities, including an institutional work based learning programme for which she was
the programme lead.
She was the institutional lead for the Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance, Lifelong
Learning Network, a partnership of over 20 higher and further education institutions across
Greater Manchester and she also managed the university’s Access Development team and
its Aimhigher partnership.
Prior to this she was Associate Dean in the Faculty of Health and Social Care, working on a
number of projects as well as being Programme Leader for an undergraduate and several
postgraduate programmes within the Faculty.
She has been involved in the evaluation of a range of projects both nationally and
internationally and has taken the lead in the development of an Impact Evaluation
Framework for WPO at the University of Surrey.
Richard Shiner
richard.shiner@offa.org.uk
Richard joined OFFA in 2011 as a Policy Adviser and has led a number of projects such as
the access agreement monitoring process and the inclusion of Initial Teacher Training in
access agreements. Richard’s current role is the Evidence and Good Practice Manager
where he has a number of responsibilities such as oversight of OFFA’s research portfolio,
contributing to strategic and operational planning and working with the sector to develop
evidence-led policy.
Prior to working at OFFA, Richard spent three years as a Planning and Information
Coordinator at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). In this role,
Richard was responsible for providing strategic and operational performance reports to the
Board and embedding a planning culture in HEFCE. Prior to working at HEFCE, Richard
worked in several roles within Bristol City Council including the Special Education Needs
department as a Portfolio Manager, and a Project Support officer in the Mental Health
service. Richard also spent a year working at Victoria University in Wellington, managing the
university’s submission to the Performance Based Research Fund (New Zealand’s version
of the REF).
Richard Smith
r.smith@hefce.ac.uk
Richard Smith is a Senior Policy Adviser at the Higher Education Funding Council for
England (HEFCE) where he oversees a range of projects and programmes within the
Research, Education and Knowledge Exchange directorate.
Richard’s work focusses on the intersections between learning and teaching, skills and
participation and he is also responsible for policy relating to teaching funding. Richard is
particularly interested in all aspects of social mobility, excellence in teaching and learning,
student academic attainment and progression, and how to evidence and evaluate policy
initiatives. He is also a member of a number of academic research advisory groups.
Prior to joining the Council in 2011, Richard spent five years working on policy and
communications at the Office for Fair Access (OFFA).
Robin Barrs
robin.barrs@admin.ox.ac.uk
Robin Barrs is Senior Head of Outreach and Evaluation at the University of Oxford, where he
leads on the strategy and delivery of undergraduate widening participation and recruitment
work, and on promoting and supporting evaluation of outreach work across the wider
collegiate university. He first gained experience of different approaches to outreach at a
variety of institutions while working on the Realising Opportunities project. It was then that he
became interested in the differing priority given to evaluation by outreach practitioners and
the variety of approaches used. While working at UCL to develop targeting, monitoring and
evaluation practice in relation to widening participation and student recruitment he chaired
the AccessHE forum on Evidence and Evaluation and gained an insight into the differing
challenges faced by institutions of different sizes and operating in different contexts across
London. Robin’s current focus is developing robust participant data collection, tracking and
reporting measures using the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) database and
developing an effective evaluation framework to be practically implemented in a wide range
of outreach activity across Oxford. He is also project managing a large externally led
evaluation of the University’s flagship outreach activities.
Robin Naylor
Robin.Naylor@warwick.ac.uk
Robin Naylor is a Professor in the Department of Economics, where he has taught and
researched since 1986. Previously, he studied at the LSE and Oxford. Robin’s current
research focuses on the economic analysis of education, labour markets and socioeconomic mobility. His publications in international journals include the Economic Journal,
the European Economic Review, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society and the
Quarterly Journal of Economics. He has been a member of the Executive Committee of the
European Association of Labour Economists and is currently the Deputy Secretary of the
Royal Economic Society. His work on the economics of education has received much
attention in the media, with appearances on BBC2’s Newsnight, Radio 4’s Today
Programme and the BBC’s Politics Show, and among policy-makers with a number of
citations in Hansard and in official government reports. One of the key findings from Robin’s
work – joint with long-term colleague and co-author Jeremy Smith – concerns performance
gaps at university by type of prior schooling.
Shaheen Barkat
s.barkat@bham.ac.uk
Shaheen Barkat is Outreach Evaluation Officer at University of Birmingham.
Shaheen joined the University of Birmingham in 2012 as Outreach Evaluation Officer. She
has over 10 years’ experience in programme evaluation in a range of fields including
widening participation in higher education, community safety, social inclusion and community
well-being, and evaluating community based programmes delivering preventative services to
communities, children, young people and families. She started her career in evaluation
consultancy before moving into in-house evaluation specialist roles building the evaluation
capacity of organisations. Since joining the University of Birmingham, Shaheen has
developed and is implementing the Outreach Evaluation Strategy which provides a
framework for producing evidence based monitoring and evaluation information to support
learning, improvement, innovation, accountability and strategic decision making.
Siobhan Dytham
s.dytham@warwick.ac.uk
Siobhan is a Research Assistant for the Warwick Observatory for Social Mobility and is
completing an ESRC funded PhD in the Sociology Department at The University of Warwick.
Her PhD research focused on social status and the notion of ‘popularity’ in secondary
schools. This took the form of a year long ethnography in a secondary school including
observations, interviews, focus groups and visual methods. Siobhan’s other research
projects have focused on educational experiences including learners’ personal and social
situations, learning spaces and teaching practices in both secondary schools and Higher
Education. Siobhan is passionate about innovation in research and teaching and lectures in
the Sociology of Education and Research Methods at the University of Warwick and Aston
University.
Tony Hoare
During an academic career, mostly spent at the Bristol, I was heavily involved in a number of
its admissions, equal opportunities and, more recently, widening participation programmes,
while my research interests included the changing social and geographical structures of the
UK Higher Education sector on which I wrote a number of papers. In 2006 I became the
University’s inaugural Director of Research in Widening Participation and led its associated
‘WP’ research cluster. There I was responsible for a wide-ranging research agenda designed
to provide the empirical underpinning for Bristol’s WP strategy and practices. I led many of
its funded projects, organised research seminars and conferences, and gave several invited
presentations across at major HE sector stakeholders and campuses. Our research agenda
covered all stages in the student life-cycle, from outreach through the admissions process, to
the experience of on-course students and their post-graduation destinations. Some specific
‘WP’ examples which illustrate this wide-ranging brief include the effect of the Sutton Trust
Summer Schools programme, the potential impact of post-qualification applications,
developing Bristol’s pioneering contextual offer practices, the effect of the LNAT admissions
tests, progression to postgraduate stud y, student withdrawals – who? and why?, the role of
bursary support on undergraduate experiences and the significance of the dropping of
national AS examinations. Some of these also generated academic papers. I retired from my
role of Director of Research in summer 2015 and am currently a research consultant to
projects in Bristol and beyond directly linked to my former role, including the Paired Peers
project involving students at both Bristol universities ,as well as being a member of a number
of related stakeholder advisory groups. Away from the tertiary education sector, I am Chair
of Governors of a Bristol Primary Academy, but we don’t engage in any HE outreach
activities (yet...).